Susanne Mentzer's recital
Tuesday at Harris Hall achieved an intimacy
and directness of communication few singers
can approach. Mentzer, one of the world's
leading mezzo-sopranos, and pianist Craig
Rutenberg, who accompanies her and an impressive
list of singers regularly, wove a gentle spell
over a rapt audience with their singing and
playing. The hall was not full, disgracefully
for Aspen concert goers, a loss for those
who missed one of the most exquisite evenings
of music I have heard here.

Mentzer, who has been spending
summers teaching at the Aspen Music Festival
and School since 2000, created a program entirely
from the work of women composers. Many of
these songs are on the 2001 CD, "The Eternal
Feminine," which Mentzer recorded with Rutenberg.
Clara Schumann and Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel
are relatively well known, but how many know
Alma Mahler's songs? Only 14 survive, dozens
other having been destroyed in a fire. Lily
Boulanger, Rebecca Clarke, Carrie Jacobs-Bond
and Libby Larsen completed the program, and
it was a wonderful mix.

All the songs reflect a woman's
point of view. It does so in the music, which,
at least with the 19th-century composers,
tends to be less forceful than that of the
men who were composing at the same time. More
significantly, it does so in the texts, particularly
the 20th-century pieces by Bond and Larsen.

As a singer, Mentzer is at
the top of her game. The voice has a clarity
and richness without feeling weighty, which
lets the music carry the words with a sense
of effortlessness. She has a wide range, digging
deep into the chest voice when needed, effortless
as the top. Mentzer's extensive stage experience
in opera was evident. A single gesture could
suggest an emotional point, a slight change
of color in the voice signal a new thought.

At the piano, Rutenberg was
as much of a pleasure to hear, not only for
the way his playing meshed seamlessly with
Mentzer's approach, but for the subtlety of
his sound. This was especially evident in
the quiet, warm introduction to the first
Schumann song, "Warum willst du and're fragen"
(Why do you wish to question others?) and
the lovely stillness of Mendelssohn's "Über
allen Gipfeln ist Ruh" (Over all the treetops
is rest.)

The Alma Mahler songs were
a revelation. Not as harmonically or rhythmically
adventurous as her husband Gustav's, they
still are fresh and distinctive enough for
us to mourn the loss of all those manuscripts
lost. Mentzer was especially effective in
"Bei dir est ist traut" (With you it's cozy),
where her body language and winsome smile
perfectly portrayed the lovers hiding.

Lily Boulanger was overshadowed
by her older sister Nadia who famously taught
some of the great composers of the 20th century,
including Aaron Copland, Walter Piston and
Philip Glass. But Lily's music, which reflects
the place and era when she wrote (Paris, the
years before World War I -- think Debussy),
is as seductive and quietly subversive as
her better-remembered contemporaries. When
Mentzer sang it, a song like "Vous m'avez
regardé avec toute votre âme"
(You looked at me with all your soul) hung
in the air with remarkable intensity.

Clarke, who was writing in
England at the turn of the 20th century, sounds
a lot like her contemporaries Frank Bridge
or George Butterworth. Mentzer drew out the
drama in her songs, especially the mythical
‘Seal Man,' which tells of a woman lured to
her death by a selkie.

For comic relief, next came
a set of "Half-Minute Songs" by Jacobs-Bond,
probably best known for her popular "I Love
You Truly." Mentzer and Rutenberg mined the
sly comedy in these half-verse miniatures,
none longer than 30 seconds. They set homely
aphorisms to music such as "Success never
comes to the sleeping," in which the music
evanesces as the singer and pianist nod off,
and the quick uplift of "A friend is a present
you give yourself."

The most modern, and most
female-centric songs, were the set called
"Love After 50" by Larsen, one of America's
most prolific composers. Rutenberg struggled
a bit with the bluesy turns in "Boy's Lips"
and the sashaying honky-tonk of "Big Sister
Says, 1967," but Mentzer got enough of the
vibe for both of them. She was just shy enough
in "Boy's Lips," a piece about girls comparing
notes on their first kisses, and brassy enough
in "Blond Men," about how seemingly unimpressed
the protagonist is with good-looking guys.

For encores, Mentzer did
a lighthearted Amy Beach waltz, "Wouldn't
That Be Queer," and "The Queen of Terre Haute"
by Cole Porter. The only male composer represented
here wrote the comedy song (from the same
musical that gave us "You Do Something to
Me") entirely from the point of view of a
talented woman trapped in a small Indiana
town. But the crowning achievement of the
entire evening was the final encore, a luminous
arrangement of the American folk song, "Who
Will Kiss My Ruby Lips?" Mentzer sang it with
such breathtaking simplicity and utter beauty
it could have been Schubert, only more straight
to the heart.

Another distinctive and utterly
personal soloist, Edgar Meyer, scored the
major triumph at Friday's Chamber Orchestra
concert, playing his own double bass concerto.
Written in 1993, the piece infuses the classical
form with the bluegrass flavor of Appalachia,
much as Gershwin's piano concerto uses New
York jazz. It also plays up the sort of free-standing
rhythmic licks and free-wheeling use of the
ultra-high register that makes Meyer's solo
work so exciting. The dude can flat-out play,
making his instrument, smaller than the usual
double bass, as agile as a cello.

The piece itself is a show-piece,
in the same way that Paganini's violin concertos
show off the fiddle rather than explore the
deeper meanings of music. The orchestra here,
conducted by Michael Stern, becomes a background
for the bass player. In Meyer's case, that's
just fine.

The rest of Stern's concert
was considerably less spectacular. French
Baroque composer Jean-Féry Rebel's
Les éléments, symphonie nouvelle
opened the concert with a surprisingly raucous
series of dissonant chords, meant to evoke
chaos, then settled into the sort of simple,
colorful dance music Rameau did much better.

After intermission, Stern
pushed Schubert's Symphony No. 9 into
a frenzy at tempos so fast that the details
were lost. Schubert indicated Allegro ma
non troppo (fast but not too much) for
the first movement, but Stern ignored the
non troppo part. He took the Andante
at a clip that felt more like allegretto,
and by the time he got to the finale's
allegro vivace things were flying by
so fast that the trumpets could not be heard
articulating their rapid-fire triplets at
the end.

For all its speed, it was
a pallid performance. It didn't help that
the horns' famous opening theme sounded as
if they were practicing it rather than trying
to give it some shape. A recurring figure
in the finale is a series of four-quarter
notes, which begin and end many of the phrases.
Only the string section seemed to have discovered
that the purpose of those four notes is as
much to propel the rhythm as to tie the themes
together. They accented the first and third
of the notes one time, let them decrescendo
another.

There's a reason this symphony
is nicknamed "The Great." It's monumental
music, superbly crafted. It has gravitas,
and the miracle is that it propels itself
magnificently to a rousing finish. That is,
when it's done right. Stern's result was not
so "Great."

Harvey Steiman

Note: Harvey Steiman will
be writing regularly from the Aspen Music
Festival through its conclusion in mid August.

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